Last year, climate movement colleagues and I engaged in a project to map the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing the Australian climate movement. We learned many things, but one of the biggest themes we heard over and again from groups was the challenges they face in recruiting and retaining staff and volunteers with the skills, experience and capacities needed for climate justice work. In fact, this was the top organizational challenge named by groups after financial stability, which is saying something for a heavily under-resourced sector.
So what’s behind this challenge with finding and keeping great people, and what might we do about it?
As we delved deeper into the problem, in an effort to diagnose its drivers, two tracks became evident:
1. Opportunities
There is no shortage of people who are concerned about the climate crisis and eager to do something about it. Eighty-four percent of Australians are moderately or extremely concerned, with 58 percent more concerned than they were two years ago. What’s missing is accessible pathways for these people to step into paid or voluntary climate movement work.
We saw this phenomenon on display most starkly during the 2019-20 Australian bushfire crisis, where climate groups were inundated with people wanting to help, yet we were lacking clear and meaningful roles and steps for them to take strategic action.
We also heard from people who were newer to the movement that they found it difficult to know where to look for climate work or volunteering opportunities. Many were also unsure whether someone with their background had anything to offer. And for volunteers, many folks who do find opportunities report that they struggle to know what they can do next to really deepen their engagement. For an issue that urgently needs more action, clearly we have a problem if folks who deeply care are unsure of what to do next or are wondering if they can be helpful.
2. Motivations
On the flipside, we also heard that — of the people who want to do more — many have concerns about the culture of working on climate. Specifically, the stresses and strains of working on an existential crisis, where one’s work feels like it is never done, and it can be hard to switch off.
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There’s no place for burnout in a burning worldIt’s no secret that there are high levels of overwork and burnout in the climate movement. And it’s an under-resourced sector — so, for those in paid roles, salaries are seldom competitive. But we need to avoid the increasingly possible scenario in which people don’t step in for fear that they might burn out, while others step out due to exhaustion.
When combined, these drivers create a vicious cycle. The lack of clear pathways for folks to take meaningful strategic action combined with reservations about the work culture leads to dwindling numbers of people doing the work, placing more stress on existing people, exacerbating the cultural stressors that are keeping people away, and making it so that people don’t have time to attend to the absorption plans and pathways needed to bring more people in.
So, what might we do about this to build a movement that supports large numbers of diverse people to participate and lead?
Step one: Transform movement culture
First and foremost, we need to attend to the reasons why people experience barriers in stepping into climate work — including volunteering — by creating excellent cultures that motivate diverse and skilled people to join and stay in the movement for the long term.
Commonly expressed as “the way we do things around here,” the factors that contribute to culture are often invisible yet felt by all. Culture is a product of the values, beliefs, norms and behaviors of a group. It is the foundation from which everything else emerges. As management consultant Peter Drucker observed “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” If we don’t have a strong culture, it won’t matter how good our technical solutions are. What could this look like?
1. Take diversity seriously. It’s also no secret that the climate movement has a diversity issue. In our mapping project, attending to the diversity of the climate movement’s leadership and participation was named as the area that would make the biggest impact.
If we are serious about addressing structural injustice, then we must start with our own spaces, prefiguring the kind of world we want to see, where the ideas, identities and leadership of folks from diverse and under-represented backgrounds are celebrated and uplifted. Transforming climate injustice will not be done by a group of like-minded people — it will take diverse perspectives and lived experiences with the capacity to sense-make this wicked problem with nuance and sensitivity.
To cultivate a truly diverse movement requires each of us to do the work to decolonize and educate ourselves and our organizations. It calls upon us to develop and resource organizational and movement-wide strategies that actively address diversity and oppression. It requires that we set and hold principles and values around diversity, justice and inclusivity at all levels of the movement, and that we call folks in and out when they don’t uphold these values. Finally, it means that we need to commit ourselves to a constant process of learning about intersectional justice and anti-oppression — and of unlearning the traits of colonization and whiteness that permeate so many of our ways of being and doing.
This work can’t just be tacked on. It is central, deep, counter-cultural work that takes dedicated time. We have to allow ourselves to be fundamentally changed by the process.
2. Build our relational capacities. Many of the people we spoke with pointed to a lack of relational capacity across the movement, which is contributing to cliqueness and in-group dynamics. To build a nurturing movement that people want to join and stay in, we need to develop our skills in active listening, feedback, self-awareness, cultivating unconditional positive regard, facilitation and conflict transformation. This will help us build deeper relationships of trust across diversity, rather than preaching to the choir and building echo-chambers that lack power.
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We need a climate movement that addresses the trauma of fighting for a burning planet3. Support folks’ emotional and physical health. One of the other top organizational challenges named in the movement map was staff/volunteer over-work and burnout. While, personally, I have found climate work to bring deep meaning to my life, working on an existential crisis day after day, in an under-resourced space, also takes its toll. We need to invest in the work of groups and people who are actively addressing this, like Psychology for a Safe Climate and the many First Nations and people of color leaders who model ways of working that are not underpinned by the over-work and martyrdom so common in white-dominated spaces. We could also consider things like movement-wide rest periods and retreats; sabbaticals, four-day weeks and a movement-wide award for paid workers.
4. Invest in connections. The gateway to critical mass lies in critical connections. People join movements because of the issue, but stay because of the people. How we connect matters. It could be the difference between someone deciding to devote large portions of their time to the climate movement or to leave. This could look like building time and space into campaigns and roles for building connections and deep relationships, organizing regular movement gatherings for folks to meet new people, and offering folks ongoing mentoring with movement elders. It would also include actively and regularly praising people for their contributions, which we know is a strong motivator for folks to stay involved.
5. Build our strategic capacity to win. Movements that are winning and building their power, grow morale and make more folks want to join. Take the peak of the school strike movement for example: There were folks streaming in from every direction, wanting to help. Good strategy involves building focus, having excellent tools and then lots of practice, experimentation and repetition, including critically building our skills in emergence — the ability to respond to the shifting sands and complexity that justice work entails. It also involves cutting our issues down into smaller goals and celebrating our wins along the way to help people stay motivated.
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DonateStep two: Open the movement doors wide
While these steps are not actually linear as presented here, we need to simultaneously improve our culture and bring more people in. I’ve ordered them in this way because I believe we need a safe and supportive enough culture before we start to bring more people in.
As we work to improve our culture, we need to open the doors as wide as possible, by creating accessible pathways into the movement for more people and, especially, for folks from more diverse backgrounds. What could this look like?
1. Affirmative action. Following on from point one in step one, taking diversity seriously means affirmative action and intentionally recruiting for folks from under-represented backgrounds and those new to social movements. However, hiring alone won’t cut it. As our colleagues at Hue say: “When you hire Black and brown people into a broken environment, you don’t fix the culture, you break the people.”
We must actively work to decolonize our groups and workplaces so that they are safe enough. Two great examples of leaders in this space are Democracy in Colour — which offers a placement program supporting First Nations and people of color staff in climate organizations — and the Multicultural Leadership Initiative, which is actively working to diversify the leadership of the climate movement. In order to scale their impact, these groups deserve more resourcing.
2. Leadership development. Many people enter climate work young and get themselves through the first few years on the skin of their teeth. My first four years in the climate movement were both exhilarating and terrifying. I had no idea what I was doing most of the time, and hear similar experiences from colleagues. We could improve this by investing in focused leadership development — coaching, mentoring and fellowship programs — that support new folks in learning the skills they need to do the work and then to evolve their capacities as their work shifts and changes. Too often the bulk of leadership development resourcing goes into paid staff, but there are so many talented volunteers in the climate movement, and more who would get involved, given more structured support and investment in their leadership.
3. Make it easy. We need ways for people to easily get involved. This could include online platforms that seamlessly help people find the best climate opportunities in their area and/or support them to connect with a step of staged actions and tasks that help them move along the ladder of engagement. It could also look like a one-stop-shop for all of the climate jobs and volunteering on offer.
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As we confront the climate crisis, is bigger and faster always better?4. Scale philanthropy. The revolution will not be funded, but we sure as heck need more jobs in the climate movement, which means scaling the amount of funding going to movement building work. It’s the biggest threat facing our planet, yet climate change receives less than two percent of philanthropy globally, and an even tinier proportion of that goes to movement-building and advocacy work.
So many people are deeply concerned about the climate crisis. So many people are looking for ways to contribute. So many people have incredible skills, capacities and experience to offer. Our mission now is to earn their respect and time. We need to get these two tracks right: 1. improving our culture to support and encourage diverse and wide participation; and 2. opening up pathways for more and diverse people to join the movement. If we can do that, the sky’s really the limit in terms of the people power we could point at climate justice.
Hello Charlie,
Back in 1970, coming out of the civil rights, free speech and early environmental movements, I organized on campus at the U. of Minnesota for the 1st Earth Day/Week. As you know, we weren’t yet focused on climate; it was largely about the scourge of unchecked industrial pollution choking cities, fouling rivers, aquifers, oceans and soils – and much else of course. Anyway, ~20 million people attended events, lectures, teach-ins & demonstrations across the US in an unprecedented show of public concern and public demand for action. It worked; Nixon (no environmentalist) signed legislation that gave us the clean air, clean water and endangered species acts and the EPA, establishing federal protections that until then were the purview of states. We had every reason to be encouraged that legislators would continue to make sensible decisions. We were wrong of course.
I recount this to make comparison with today’s struggling, divided and far less successful enviro/climate movement, even though today ~65% of US voters are either “very concerned or alarmed” by the climate crisis. We can point to all the cultural and political shifts that have led to present anti-science & anti-Nature hostilities, and dozens of other factors involving government corruption, corporate hegemony and media abdication of responsibility that block progress. But I think the critical difference is that 50 years ago there were clear legal & regulatory solutions to equally clear problems. It’s not the case today.
What are the targets now for climate activists and how achievable are they?
I appreciate your focus on movement building but, no offense, it may be putting the cart before the horse. If the target is increasing awareness, god knows we need more of that. Which certainly involves attention to movement self-organization, diversity, funding, etc. But if the idea is that climate activism, people power, can have significant influence over decision makers, or can in the end prevent further damage to Earth systems now locked into an unstoppable confluence of multiple system-killing feedbacks, well, I believe that is, to say the least, an unreasonable expectation.
Given the evidence, it’s clear to me that there is no remedy for the ecological collapse we are witnessing. Which will predictably be followed by collapse of industrial society, regardless of national promises or efforts to reduce emissions.
So, in a nut, I believe the focus of the climate movement should shift from the goal of political agency to preparation for collapse and logical, compassionate, detailed planning for community-based survival. For the fortunate few, “renewables” will keep the lights & the internet on for a few years to come, but in the meantime Australia & the rest of the world are faced with the immediate need to adapt to worsening climate disruptions that I need not describe.
So, I recommend that discussion of climate movement dynamics be coupled with thoughtful, evidence-based discussion of what the movement can and cannot accomplish. Otherwise I believe we are making false assumptions about movement power and missing its true power to ease suffering and confusion as life as we knew it unravels.
Best to you,
Brian R Smith
Willits, Ca, USA
In Greta Thurnberg’s book “The Climate Book” she talks about social “tipping points”. Which is optimistic thing to think about. Thank you all for your climate work!
Fomenting for all industry and govt for 9/5 good paying jobs saving the planet would really help encourage steadfastness in the effort as well as concentrating ALL education on climate problem-solving strategies in every field at least with the sense of urgency of, say, creating another atom bomb. Permaculture every single thing… including areas affected by the bombs so far.
Boycotts. Divestment. Strikes. All are good and necessary now!
Hello Charlie,
Thanks for your wonderful and much needed articles. I am an activist researcher and PhD candidate at the university of Wollongong, I study the group dynamics of activist groups. My PhD research is looking at ways to improve group member relational capacities through the building of self-awareness skills and how this may impact group culture.
For part of my PhD, I will be conducting an 11-week qualitative research study beginning in October 2023 and I will be contacting social justice and environmental activist groups to participate. During the study, activist groups will be invited to participate in a self-awareness workshop where they will learn six skills. 3 of the skills are about how we perceive an experience and 3 of the skills are about how we respond to an experience.
If your group would like to participate or you know of any groups that might like to participate, please have them contact me via email on ls519@uowmail.edu.au and I will send further information.
Thank you for all your hard work.
Liane